


As Soon as the Ink Dries

by prussia



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comedy, Diary/Journal, M/M, Modern Day, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-13 04:30:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7962490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prussia/pseuds/prussia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“A diary! One I’ve been writing in like a silly junior high girl since time began...”</em>
</p><p>“This will be the best volume of my diary yet! Who cares if it’s the last volume? Not me, and who said it would be, anyway, huh? Ha ha. I’ll write so whoever reads it will never forget! They’ll shudder at my almighty prose! - Oh shit. I spilled beer on this page. - No matter. As soon as the ink dries, I’ll take this volume to a publisher. Ah! And maybe they’ll make a movie of my life story. I could play myself and even cast that crying Romano to be my sidekick! He’d thank me for days with plates of homemade pasta.”</p><p>***</p><p>A look inside what might be Prussia’s last entries in his long line of diaries.</p><p>Modern day life isn’t always so kind to him, but he has a pen in hand, a beer by his side, and a bird on his head. A concerned little brother may check in, and surely the phone rings once or twice.</p><p>“Austria calling again. That damn aristocrat. I’m so mad, I think maybe I’ll tease him for a while...”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written September 2015. 
> 
> Status: Abandoned Novel.
> 
> It's only two chapters in length, and I doubt I'll ever finish it, but who knows. 
> 
> \-- I've always wanted to do a First Person POV Prussia fic, and this one could have been massive! And so in-depth as far as canon goes, but I just don't have the energy nor stamina for it anymore.
> 
> Gonna share what I have here to get myself back in the swing of publishing. 
> 
> Maybe one day I'll add more...
> 
> If you read it, I do hope you enjoy it!

Dear Diary,

Today I was awesome as always! West woke up before me, though, so I’ve got to try harder tomorrow. Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a Prussian healthy, wealthy, wise, handsomer, and even better than everyone else in the whole wide world, especially Austria.

Always better than Austria.

You know, I called him this morning, some time after West and I ate breakfast, and I asked Austria what he was wearing. He mumbled something about, “Why do you want to know?!”

I said, “I don’t want to know. I’m just trying to picture the scene.”

I swear, Diary, that man has no imagination. He doesn’t know the first thing about me, or how my mind works. I need the important details so I can report them to you later, of course.

So then I told him to tell me, and to just be grateful I called.

\-- He should be grateful, too! I mean...he’s always whining about being lonely. How no one cares about him, or remembers him anymore. As if he’s some lost country. Well, I'll tell you what, Diary, he doesn’t have the first idea about any of that either, you know?

Strange the way that man thinks.

Anyway, so Austria told me he was wearing a bathrobe. -- Just a bathrobe! Nothing else...

Can you imagine? Because I can’t, because I don’t want to, and that’s all there is to it, Diary.

And so I imagined it anyway, because what else can you do at Ten AM with a phone in your hand and a belly full of orange juice and sausage?

I don’t know. (A rule of writing I learned not too long ago, while googling 'how to keep a proper blog', since online stuff is trickier than this hand-written business: _No one cares what you ate for breakfast_. Ah, but you care, don’t you, Diary? An important detail in the great long history of the great me’s life! Someone, someday, somewhere down the line will ask some very important person, ‘Excuse me, Dear Sir,’ and the other guy will answer, ‘Just a minute and let me finish this important phone call.’ And once the other guy is off the telephone, he’ll look over to the first guy and say, ‘Yes, just what is so important you had to interrupt me?’ And the first guy will say, ‘I need to know what the great and almighty Prussia ate for breakfast that one September morning of 2015.’ And the second guy will say, ‘Oh yes! Why didn’t you say so in the first place?! What Prussia ate for breakfast is of the utmost dire importance!’ And he’ll hug the first guy, because he’s so grateful someone else cares, and then finally, the second guy will whisper in the first guy’s ear, ‘My dear beloved Prussia ate a breakfast of orange juice and sausage.’)

You needed to know, so I told you, and that’s that.

Now...where was I?

Oh yes, Austria was in a flimsy white bathrobe, probably with coffee stains on the collar. Maybe some lipstick stains, too!

Ah, I can see it now...

I wonder whose lipstick it was? -- I wonder if I could wear lipstick and get away with it??

Couldn’t you just imagine me, Diary, wearing red lipstick? Maybe if I wore it -- maybe if I walked all the way down to the nearest drugstore and bought a tube of bright red lipstick -- West would take a good long hard look at me and say, ‘That’s it, Brother! I don’t know what you’re going through, and I won’t pretend to know nor understand it, but...I INSIST you and I spend the rest of the day together.’ And not just the afternoon. Not just the hour he has free for lunch. Not just the mind-numbing break he has for supper, where we sit around the dinner table staring at each other while poking our potatoes with forks.

Nope, he’d spend the rest of the day with me; drop everything, and we’d go for a long walk, and have a long talk, and he’d wrap his arms around me, and thank me for every little thing -- and for every big thing -- I’ve ever done for him. Ever said to him. Ever gave to him. Ever taught him.

God knows I could fill these pages with all the examples to prove it, but...

You’ve already had those pages, haven’t you, Diary? So many volumes stacked on my shelves. So many books, and the bindings are bent, and the covers need dusting. -- I’ll add that to my awesome to-do list!

To Do Today:

  * Dust every diary I've ever wrote.



Ah, but West is a busy man, and even if he offered to drop everything and spend a whole day and night with me, I wouldn’t let him.

You know this, Diary.

You know me better than I know myself.

***

But I said to Austria, “So you’re still in your bathrobe, huh?” And then I laughed at him a bit, while sitting on the couch in the living room. -- You know the couch, Diary. The green-and-yellow striped one; the one West refuses to get rid of even though it’s old, and has coffee stains on it, all thanks to when Austria was living here. _The Dark Days of the Dark Years_ , I call them.

\-- No one else calls them that, yet God knows at the time, West wasn’t wild about the idea even if his boss was, and so was that stupid aristocrat, even if all his people weren’t nuts about it, either, but...I think of them as Dark Days, because I never understood the reason to drag another body on the fire. I never understood the reason to take another country along. Maybe I saw something beginning the others missed. Maybe I should have mentioned that to West, but you know, it would have never done any good. He was just as helpless in the whole thing as Austria was, and I was even more helpless. My time was already over then, for the most part. Even if it wasn’t official yet.

But yes, Austria living with West as if those two were married! Can you believe it, Diary? He fought to raise my super awesome little brother as his own little brother, but lost, only to end up in something close to a marriage with the poor guy.

I think Austria would marry a bathmat if he assumed it would love him back.

I also think, sometimes, of setting that couch on fire. I even stabbed it one night with a steak knife while eating my dinner in front of the TV. Watching a horror movie, and I blamed the film for the idea, and West banned me from watching scary movies, and from eating steak in the living room at Three AM. And then to fix the upholstery, he carried it to some smug guy in a fancy shop, and had the whole damn couch recovered in that same green-and-yellow striped fabric! I hate it!!

But yeah, you know the couch; it’s the same one where I sit every morning to read, and every night to watch TV, and I often slide you between the cushions when West brings Italy into the room. God knows if Italy saw you, he’d want to grab you and read you. And I couldn’t refuse. There's no saying no to that cute face! Not when his eyes are wide open, and he’s pleading with me, in that high-pitched tone, ‘But pretty please, great super-strong handsome Prussia, I simply MUST read your diary!!’ Ha ha. I’ll let him read you one day...just not any day soon.

Anyway, this morning on the phone, Austria spat something about my being undignified, and I remember I rubbed my belly, because the orange juice wasn’t settling so well, right as Austria breathed out the next remark; some slip of the tongue, I think.

He said, “You’re always nosing into my business, and it’s none of yours!”

I said, “No, right now I'm not doing anything with my nose...I’m unbuttoning my pants.”

And of course I meant it towards my not feeling so well at the time -- wanting to loosen my pants so my tummy-ache might improve -- but he thought I was being perverted! He even called me a pervert!! (Me! Of all people. The jackass.)

But, you know, what else can you do but apologize?

I didn’t want him to hang up the phone.

So I whispered, “I’m sorry...I don’t feel well, Austria. Just call me later, and I’ll explain everything,” and then I ended the call before he had the chance to! Ha, so I won again, and it was a great morning, and absolutely nothing went wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon elements discussed herein are mainly derived from the 2010 Christmas Event known as [Hetastreeeem](http://www.hetarchive.net/scanlations/hetastreeeem/index.php).
> 
> In that story, a France from an alternate/parallel universe goes around attaching people, but I imagine Prussia has a hard time accepting that fact, and just continues to believe it was the real France all along. ;)
> 
> And see, this is what I wanted from this story; I wanted to go back and reread all of Prussia's canon moments, and then have him reminisce about them in his diary, but...I'm worthless. Or lack focus. Or both.

Dear Diary,

So I wandered upstairs a few hours ago, and I turned off the lights in my bedroom.

Lied down on the bed, not to take a nap, because naps are for wimps, babies, and smug smart-ass aristocrats who can’t stay awake and face the day alone. -- Ah, and for sick guys. And girls. Sick guys and girls who need lots of rest!

Like when West makes sure Italy gets a nap every afternoon, because cute guys like Italy need their beauty sleep. (I’m guessing that’s what siestas are really for. Cute Italians and Cute Spaniards, and...well, any other group of people who take those fancy-sounding naps.)

But I never take them, because I don’t need them.

You know this, Diary.

So I lied on the bed, and tossed on my side, and grabbed you from the nightstand. Wrote about this morning, and now I’m here again. Back to writing because it’s half-past Two in the afternoon, and you know what’s funny? Austria still hasn’t called me back.

Also, another (but not as funny) fact: I’m still in this dark room.

For whatever strange reason, I can’t seem to be bothered to climb out of this bed, and push the curtains open to check the sky. But I swear to you, Diary...I swear it on Fritz’s grave: I hear rain. And I sense it. I sense the sky is gray, and it’s an amazing thing, Diary. I think I’m like a horse before the storm. I can always sense when there’s some gray, bleak wall of rain on the horizon.

But I never checked, so maybe I’m just hearing things.

I also heard footsteps in the hallway, about twenty minutes ago, but you know, I must have been mistaken about that, too, because West never knocked on my door. He never checked in on me. You’d think if someone’s awesome big brother was lying in bed with a stomach-ache, the little brother would throw open the door -- beat it down with his fists if he had to! If it’s locked, which mine isn’t -- and he’d peek in and say, ‘Ah, Brother! I heard you had a tummy-ache!! What can I do to help you??'

But West is busy; he has so much work he has to finish before the weekend. I understand that, and you know what, Diary? I miss it. I miss being busy. I miss having deadlines. -- When West asks me to help him, it’s bliss.

***

So it's Three PM now, and I still haven’t crawled out of this bed, the curtains are still pulled closed, and the door is still shut and on its hinges. No long splinters of wood jutting out from the darn thing, and that’s all well and good. No knob turned. No hard feelings.

I’ll just check in on myself.

‘How are you feeling, Almighty Prussia?’

‘I’m feeling a little bit better, you super sexy guy! Thank you for asking...’

***

Ah, but guess who just called me?! The second I set down my pen to daydream, the phone rang, and it was Austria calling me back; returning my call. What a great way to spend my last half-hour in bed.

Of course, I didn’t tell him I was in bed when he asked what I was doing. I didn’t tell him I was lying here (and have been lying here, most the afternoon). I didn’t tell him I was wondering -- even dying to know! - whether or not it was raining outside, or if, perhaps, I’m losing my mind, if not simply the sense of detecting an oncoming storm.

And I certainly didn’t tell him I took off my pants completely, and am lounging about in my underwear, because I didn’t want him to call me a pervert again. Didn’t want to hear his soft velvet voice utter such a word.

He always spats at me about talking so harshly, but it’s strange to me, Diary, how Austria can say certain things in such a refined way, yet...the way he pierces them into you, you’d swear the most innocent words were actually profane. You’d swear he dipped his lexicon in venom. You’d swear each syllable is a jagged-edged sword; a full-blown weapon disguised as clever lines, where a knife is a noun, but also a verb.

And all the while, a loaded gun awaits behind every moment of silence when he trails off and back in, only to shout at you about how much you’re bothering him, yet...two seconds later, he’s sniffling, with tears in the sound, about how lonely he is and if only you’d be nice to him. And then he always ends his request of ‘Can’t we just try and be friends?’ with that wobbling little hitch his tone gets one second before he finally breaks down and cries, ‘I’d really like that, Prussia, so please be nice.’

As if I’m ever anything BUT nice! -- And when I’m not, well...maybe he doesn’t deserve it. No, I think not.

Austria is the strangest case of loneliness meets indifference.

He’s never nice to me himself, yet...

Well, I’m sighing, and staring at a ceiling, and I stopped a moment from writing to you, Diary, and now the cap of my pen looks like the butt of a cigarette gnawed on by a smoker so anxious, he nearly ate the filter. Surely ingested some of it. Can’t be good for the health, now can it?

I’m glad I gave up smoking. I haven’t smoked since I got back here. After living elsewhere. _The Dark Years of Dark Days_. Ha. Everything’s dark when you think about it in certain ways. -- _The Dark Days of the Dark Years_ with Austria living here, and _The Dark Years of Dark Days_ when I was living with Russia. Nothing close to a marriage, thank God. At least that part was left in the old days where it belonged. Not to say Austria and West were married during that whole affair; the Anschluss. God, the word makes me want to puke. -- Want to turn my stomach again, Diary? Just inspire me to use the words Anschluss, Soviets, or Mark.

Funny what people catch on to, and notice about me, huh, Diary? I’m pretty sure the Nordic guys had a nice little chat about my aversion to the word ‘mark’ or any word close to it, while I was off trying to celebrate Christmas that one year.

I remember I was wearing my favorite Christmas sweater. The one with the ‘I love trees’ or something printed on the front. I can’t remember who bought that thing for me, or who made it. Hell, maybe I made it! Why not? I probably did...the darn thing was so awesome. And...I remember Austria showed up here, and Hungary was with him. I remember growling on the porch at her, and West interrupted. He always breaks up my best fights! Never sees the fun in them; the excitement to be had; the potential for bigger and better things, like...

Nasty comebacks. Throwing icicles at people’s foreheads. _‘Nyoom!'_ \-- 'Prepare yourself for my awesome icicle attack!!'

West has no imagination either, I swear, Diary, and really, that’s one of my biggest regrets. I should have read more to him when he was a child. But God knows, we didn’t have time for all that. Not very often, anyway. Just Brothers Grimm here and there.

So yeah, I read stories to him when I could. -- Wars can’t fight themselves, you know, _and the bad guys never win, the end._

But I came back into the house that Christmas (and maybe you remember, Diary; I’m sure I’ve covered this before, but then again, I was so tired that next morning, maybe I forgot, or maybe I just summarized...), and I told Austria, when the phone rang that night, if he could answer it -- if he could even find the darn thing -- before it stopped ringing, I’d walk around the house doing a full handstand buck naked!

Ah, and I’ll never forget this, because what on earth did he mean by this? I’ll never know...but Austria said:

“I’ll make sure you uphold that crude promise.”

Crude?! Naked handstand would qualify for some mad circus trick!! HA! I bet I could move to America and get a job with Ringling Brothers.

‘And now for our next trick of the evening, the great former country of Prussia will walk backwards on his hands while completely unclothed!’

What a treat for the kiddies, right? No, never mind. Just for the ladies.

A marvel for the ages! Ha. Me, and...

Well, living in America doesn’t tempt me, and neither does upholding promises if Austria’s gonna go around dubbing them as ‘crude’.

So it’s a good thing he never made it to the phone. -- I made it to the phone!

And Austria?

He ended up answering the door.

After that comes the clearest memory of the evening: I found his little bow-tie on the floor. The bow-tie France had cut from Austria's little brown jacket. (Why does Austria dress like the lovechild of Mozart and Frodo Baggins? I'll never know that, either.)

But I answered the phone, and then France showed up, and cut my clothes from me as well.

Ruined that cute sweater! I’ll never forgive him for that.

Ah, but first he pulled me out the window, for which, yes, I’ve forgiven him, but only because he apologized. West MADE him apologize. (Why didn’t West make him replace my sweater, too? Or Austria’s little hobbit jacket?? You know...I kinda liked that little thing, and...I may actually still have the little freed bow-tie. I think I put it in a box around here somewhere...yep! I just climbed out of bed and back in, Diary, after checking the top of my closet. The little wooden box on the top shelf, in the back corner of the top shelf, and...right there, in the little wooden box -- I’ve got it on the bed now, opened beside me -- there’s the little brown bow-tie. Ha! You’d think Austria would have asked for it back. So he could sew his little suit back together, and wear it as proud as a frugal old king, despite all the stitches and patches.)

But the wooden box is right here next to me, along with the bow-tie, and a stack of Austria’s letters from when I was over there. _The Dark Years_. And you know, each one is longer than the last (the letters AND the years, but of course I'm speaking of the letters), if you read through them in chronological order, but then there’s the last one he wrote. The very last letter he sent to me before I came home...

Just three little words:

‘I [blank] you.'

Blank, because Russia blocked out the second word, and I’ve never known -- never had the guts to ask; no wait, I always have the guts...maybe it’s the heart I didn't have -- what the middle word was, exactly. ‘I miss you’? ~ ‘I love you’?? ~ ‘I hate you’?!

So I don’t know what Austria meant by it, and I’ll never know, nor ask him. I suppose I could ask Russia, and maybe he’d tell me, but I’m sure he's forgotten it by now. All the letters he censored over the years, why would that one ring any bells? Doesn’t matter. -- But the letters are here, and I’m not rereading them today, Diary, although I did just look at the last one Austria sent. Beneath a short but fat blob of black ink, I can’t really tell how long the censored word is, but it’s not very long, and surely it’s a four-letter word, which doesn’t help me. All those four-letter words...and they might as well be the same. Something profane, or something serious: it doesn’t matter. If he wrote I love you, he wrote it. If he wrote I miss you, that’s even better, because love dies; it fades away. Yet if Austria missed me, he missed me, and there’s no changing that. Ah, and if he hated me, surely he’s over it by now. -- That’s the great thing about Austria’s hate. It, too, dies and fades away.

But the funny thing I was talking about: Austria was gone. France had stashed him in a room somewhere. God if I know where, and even if I did know -- even if someone told me later -- it's escaped me.

Some small dark room, and France had thrown Austria against the wall, unconscious with his little Frodo jacket all ripped to smithereens.

And France threw me in that same room, and I guess we lied there like that most the night.

I know West found us, and that’s the great part about it. He told me he smiled down at us, and felt like an angel who had been sent to us by some unseen hand.

I’ll never know what he meant by that, but I do know West can be pretty damn poetic when he sets his mind, his heart AND his guts to it.

Surely poetry takes guts. Gotta be brave to write that stuff. Maybe I’ll try it here one night, Diary. Would you like that? I can get a beret from old Francey Pants (he owes me that much! Ruining my best Christmas sweater, and all; the least he could do is lend me a hat). And I’ll sit here, pretending to smoke again, because I imagine all poets smoke, and...yeah, we’ll have amateur hour right here in these pages!

Maybe I could even write one for Austria?

The Missing Word ~ A poem by the Great Prussia

> _‘Could it be love? Could it be hate?? You said you missed me, maybe, as I walked past the gate...’_

Do poems have to rhyme, Diary? Do you think it matters in the grand scheme of things??

Well, let's get back to it, anyway...

> _'And there I could see your face, the last letter sent, and the censor was a mistake, for here I am driven to eat out of your hands for the next couple decades, and it never ends, but who wants it to? The missing word and the lack of love or hate is all thanks to you.'_

God, now I’m stuck in it! Must stop rhyming, and this whole silly poetry business, and...

Oh yes, the phone call while ago.

Austria said he was busy, and couldn’t talk long, but he talked for half an hour. I lied here and listened, and no, I didn’t tell him I was in bed, mostly because I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea, but also...I didn’t tell him because he didn’t ask.

He did, however, ask why I apologized earlier -- you know, before I hung up the phone after breakfast -- and he said:

“That’s not like you, Prussia.”

As if it was a bad thing! -- Like I should be sorry for being sorry?!

I told him I wasn’t sorry, then, and I never said it. He must have heard me wrong. It was all his fault, anyway. For my getting mad, and hell, maybe it was his fault I had the stomach-ache to begin with! And here I’ve been blaming the orange juice!!

Today’s To-Do List Continued:

  * Apologize to the orange juice.



I’m sure the juice won’t throw my apology back in my face.

I didn’t ask for this, you know?

And so, Diary, I tried to steer the whole thing back on track. Except I made one vital mistake; I asked Austria if he was still wearing his bathrobe, and he said yes, and I laughed again. I may have even mentioned, "What color is it, really? Because I’m seeing a white one, and...I wish I could actually see it. With you in it. Maybe touch it a bit."

Well, he didn’t call me a pervert again. The strangest thing is, he fell silent.

I’m not sure what I said after that, but...Austria sort of breathed out heavy; not quite a sigh, and not quite a huff. More like a...God, it couldn’t have been relief? Or...some sign of resignation?? I’m not even sure what that means...

Austria is the one person who can say more to me without saying a word, and it frightens me.


End file.
